Sri Lankan villagers feared danger from sky, not sea

MANALKADU, Sri Lanka — When the villagers heard the roar, they dropped to the ground. They knew what to do when the bombs fell.

But they made a grim error, mistaking one danger for another. For this was no fighter jet, not like the ones that flew over in past years, waging a civil war with the rebel Tamil Tigers. This was something else entirely. A wall of water was about to swallow the beach.

"They thought, `OK, the war has started,'" said Brig. N.A. Jasooraya, the military commander of the area. "And some of them died because of it."

Like the rest of the Jaffna peninsula, Manalkadu struggles to cope with the aftermath of Sunday's tsunami, which has killed an estimated 22,799 in Sri Lanka.

Recovery in the north is complicated by a civil war, which lasted 20 years and led to a shaky truce in 2002. This peninsula is Tamil territory. Many here are sympathetic to the Tamil Tigers, the separatist group that controls a nearby swath of land hit especially hard by the tsunami.

The peninsula is filled with signs of war: land mines and graffiti from the Tigers, also called the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. Much of the Jaffna peninsula has been under Tiger control at one point or another. Just last month, the group's leader threatened to resume a full-fledged war.

The government was ready. For years, this coast was protected by military outposts, with barbed wire and radar and vigilant young soldiers, staring at the sea, preparing for a sneak attack.

But those outposts are gone, much like everything else. At least 42 soldiers died here in the tsunami, officials said.

Camouflage clothing, military boots and pieces of radar equipment lie in the middle of Manalkadu and other coastal villages, pushed there by the water. The water also dredged up several hundred land mines in the peninsula, threatening survivors and aid workers with injury, or worse.

"This disaster is a message from God: They must end this war," said Rev. Amalraj, a Catholic priest, as he consoled survivors on the peninsula. Like many ethnic Tamils, he uses only one name.

So far, it's not clear what will happen. Some blame the government for not sending as much post-tsunami aid to the Tiger-controlled territory as to the rest of the country. Some blame the Tigers for limiting access to potential help.

The Tigers have asked for more aid and a bigger voice in the relief effort. The government responds by listing all it is doing: On Tuesday, Jaffna security forces sent donations into the nearby Tiger area, including 1,000 sleeping mats, 1,000 sarongs, 500 new saris, 200 cans of fish, rice, tea leaves and coriander.

"This is a national disaster," said Maj. Gen. Sunil Tennakoon, head of the security forces in Jaffna. "We all have to get together."

Sri Lanka's president, Chandrika Kumaratunga, asked the country Tuesday to shed its ethnic differences and invited the Tigers to join the relief effort.

And on Wednesday, the leader of the Tamil Tigers made his own peace offering, issuing a statement of condolence to the southern Sinhalese, his sworn enemy.

Rebel commander Velupillai Prabhakaran also made a rare personal appeal to international aid donors and UN organizations to help ethnic Tamils affected by the tsunami waves.

"The devastation caused by this tidal surge has exacerbated the sufferings of our people already affected by a war that continued for over 20 years and has torn asunder our nation," he said in a statement on a pro-rebel Web site.

The village looks depressingly like every other village in every other country hit by the tsunami: Uprooted palm trees, crushed homes, boats where they do not belong, tangles of fishing nets, a mess of the sea and the sand and human lives. Description fails to capture the destruction.

The difference is in the details: A boy's black shoe, laces tied, filled with sand. A girl's pink party dress, hanging from a treetop. An ace of spades playing card, 500 yards from the five of diamonds. A distraught fisherman named Lenin, who keeps dropping a transistor radio against a concrete foundation, until the radio cracks open and sand falls out.

"The boats have been destroyed," he muttered. "Even the nets are gone."

The survivors comb through wreckage and carry away what they can--water pots, dishes, a framed family picture marking the deaths years ago of Theresama and C. Varaprakasam. The villagers pile their belongings in trucks and drive away.

It seems everyone has lost someone in the coastal villages of this country, so stories of death are nothing new.

Here is just one: Reginold, 16, saved his sister Ragilka, 10, as she was about to drown. Their brother Ragindran, 6, also survived, along with his necklace of the Virgin Mary. But their parents and three other siblings died. All the children saved was a motorbike, a suitcase and some wet clothes.

At a shelter Wednesday, Reginold said he was not sure what he had done for the past few days, how he had lived.

"Words have no value anymore," said Amalraj, the priest. "When we ask people what has happened, they just start to cry."

So far, 64 bodies have been found in Manalkadu, which had a population of about 2,500, and 10 people are missing. It is a small death toll given the enormous destruction in Sri Lanka, where mass graves dot the coastal areas. In Manalkadu, the dead all have names, small consolation for survivors.

Again Wednesday, burials were planned. Clergymen stood near the village graveyard and three empty coffins.

The bodies of two baby boys rested nearby, underneath a tarp in the shadow of a tamarind tree. One body had just been found in the water. The other had been in a palm tree.

The priests stood in their white robes, waiting for hours, hoping someone would come to claim them.